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39The Taming of the TruePhilosophical Review 109 (2): 290. 2000.The Taming of the True continues the project Neil Tennant began in Anti-realism and Logic of investigating and defending anti-realism. Tennant’s earlier book anticipated a second volume, in which issues related to empirical discourse would be addressed in greater detail. The Taming of the True provides this sequel. It also attempts a ground-clearing project, by addressing challenges to some of the presuppositions and implications of Tennant’s anti-realist position. Finally, it takes an opportuni…Read more
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38The Oxford Handbook of Truth (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2018.A team of 36 leading experts present the definitive guide to philosophical issues to do with truth. They survey how the concept of truth has been understood from antiquity to the present; offer critical assessments of the standard theories of truth; and explore the role of truth in logic, language, metaphysics, ethics, science, and mathematics.
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37Quantification and Contributing Objects to ThoughtsPhilosophical Perspectives 22 (1): 207-231. 2008.
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36Quantification and RealismPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 69 (3): 541-572. 2004.This paper argues for the thesis that, roughly put, it is impossible to talk about absolutely everything. To put the thesis more precisely, there is a particular sense in which, as a matter of semantics, quantifiers always range over domains that are in principle extensible, and so cannot count as really being ‘absolutely everything’. The paper presents an argument for this thesis, and considers some important objections to the argument and to the formulation of the thesis. The paper also offers…Read more
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31Presuppositions, truth values, and expressing propositionsIn Gerhard Preyer & Georg Peter (eds.), Contextualism in Philosophy: Knowledge, Meaning, and Truth, Oxford University Press. pp. 349--396. 2005.Philosophers like to talk about propositions. There are many reasons for this. Perhaps the most common is that philosophers are sometimes more interested in the content of a thought or utterance than in the particular sentence or utterance that might express it on some occasion. Propositions are offered as these contents.
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27But Without …?Croatian Journal of Philosophy 20 (3): 353-364. 2020.In this short note, I discuss the viability of truth-conditional semantics in light of Pietroski’s criticisms. I explore an alternative view that follows Pietroski in putting emphasis on the relation of meanings to concepts, but makes some room for truth conditions.
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27Context and DiscourseMind and Language 17 (4): 333-375. 2002.Current theories of context see context as composed of information that is localizable to individual utterances. Current theories of discourse grant that discourses have important global properties that are not so localizable. In this paper, I argue that context, even narrowly construed as whatever combines with a sentence to determine truth conditions, must have a discourse–global component. I identify a context–dependence phenomenon related to the linguistic concepts of topic and focus, isolat…Read more
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21Context and unrestricted quantificationIn A. Rayo & G. Uzquiano (eds.), Absolute Generality, Oxford University Press. pp. 45--74. 2006.Quantification is haunted by the specter of paradoxes. Since Russell, it has been a persistent idea that the paradoxes show what might have appeared to be absolutely unrestricted quantification to be somehow restricted. In the contemporary literature, this theme is taken up by Dummett (1973, 1993) and Parsons (1974a,b). Parsons, in particular, argues that both the Liar and Russell’s paradoxes are to be resolved by construing apparently absolutely unrestricted quantifiers as appropriately restricted…Read more
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20Judges, experiencers, and tasteInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy. forthcoming.This paper reviews the claim that certain predicates, including what are called predicates of personal taste, have a sometimes-hidden element for a judge or experiencer. This claim was advanced in my own earlier work, as well as a number of other papers. My main goal here is to review some of the arguments in favor of this claim, and along the way, to present some of my earlier unpublished work on the matter. In much of the earlier literature, this claim was part of a debate between relativists,…Read more
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20Quantified terms are terms of generality. They are also provide some of our prime examples of the phenomenon of scope. The distinction between singular and general terms, as well as the ways that general terms enter into scope relations, are certainly fundamental to our understanding of language. Yet when we turn to natural language, we encounter a huge and apparently messy collection of general terms; not just every and some, but most, few, between five and ten, and many others. Natural-language …Read more
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18Unrestricted quantification and extraordinary context dependence?Philosophical Studies 180 (5): 1491-1512. 2023.This paper revisits a challenge for contextualist approaches to paradoxes such as the Liar paradox and Russell’s paradox. Contextualists argue that these paradoxes are to be resolved by appeal to context dependence. This can offer some nice and effective ways to avoid paradox. But there is a problem. Context dependence is, at least to begin with, a phenomenon in natural language. Is there really such context dependence as the solutions to paradoxes require, and is it really just a familiar lingu…Read more
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18Minimalism, deflationism, and paradoxesIn J. C. Beall & Bradley Armour-Garb (eds.), Deflationism and Paradox, Clarendon Press. 2005.
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14What is a Tense, Anyway?Croatian Journal of Philosophy 23 (69): 349-367. 2023.We study three different conceptions of tense emerging from semantics, syntax and morphology, respectively. We investigate how they bear on the question of the relationship between tense and modality as they emerge in Cariani’s The Modal Future (2021).
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10The Concept of TruthIn Ernie Lepore & Kurt Ludwig (eds.), Blackwell Companion to Donald Davidson, Blackwell. 2013.This chapter reviews Davidson's main work on truth. It focuses on the connections between truth, meaning, and interpretation that form the core of Davidson's views, and on the relations of his views to traditional theories of truth. It highlights several key ideas that comprise Davidson's approach to truth: Tarski's work on truth is fundamental to understanding the concept, as is the relation of truth to meaning, and we fail to understand that connection adequately unless we take into account th…Read more
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9Chomsky on Semantics 1In Nicholas Allott, Terje Lohndal & Georges Rey (eds.), A Companion to Chomsky, Wiley. 2021.Semanticists will often casually remark that Noam Chomsky rejects semantics. Chomsky has frequently noted how poorly understood some aspects of semantics are, and has shown little inclination to grant the status of reasonably well‐developed science to many parts of semantics. One specific reason Chomsky has often voiced skepticism about semantics is that he saw the wrong kinds of appeals to semantics in the wrong places. The arguments for the autonomy of syntax in Chomsky's early writing have be…Read more
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9Where the Paths Meet: Remarks on Truth and ParadoxIn Felicia Ackerman (ed.), Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 1981.This chapter contains sections titled: Nature: Two Conceptions of Truth Background on Logic and Paradox Nature and Logic And Now Revenge References.
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6Logical Consequence and Natural LanguageIn Colin R. Caret & Ole T. Hjortland (eds.), Foundations of Logical Consequence, Oxford University Press. pp. 71-120. 2015.One of the great successes in the study of language has been the application of formal methods, including those of formal logic. Even so, this chapter argues against one way of accounting for this success, by arguing that the study of natural language semantics and of logical consequence relations are not the same. There is indeed a lot we can glean about logic from looking at our languages, and at our inferential practices, but the semantic properties of natural languages do not determine genui…Read more
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4Quine on Reference and QuantificationIn Ernie Lepore & Gilbert Harman (eds.), A Companion to W. V. O. Quine, Wiley-blackwell. 2013.Gary Ostertag: Quine and Russell: The chapter provides a selective overview of themes common to Russell and Quine, focusing on Russell's theory of descriptions and the notion of contextual definition. It begins by discussing Russell and Quine on modality, along the way highlighting the following topics: how C.I. Lewis's metalinguistic understanding of the modal operators shaped the subsequent debate about modality – in particular, how it rendered the very idea of de re modality unintelligible; h…Read more
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1The Paradox of the Liar and the Problem of ContextDissertation, Harvard University. 1997.One of the difficulties surrounding the ancient Paradox of the Liar is that it is unclear what philosophical problem it poses. In this thesis, I offer a diagnosis of the problem, and defend a solution to it. In Chapter I, I argue that the problem posed is one about the relation between a sentence uttered in a context and the proposition expressed. Chapter II supports this conclusion, by arguing against most notions of truth-value gap, and by elaborating on the notion of failing to express a prop…Read more
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1Models, model theory, and modelingIn Gil Sagi & Jack Woods (eds.), The Semantic Conception of Logic : Essays on Consequence, Invariance, and Meaning, Cambridge University Press. 2021.
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1Complexity and Hierarchy in Truth PredicatesIn T. Achourioti, H. Galinon, J. Martínez Fernández & K. Fujimoto (eds.), Unifying the Philosophy of Truth, Imprint: Springer. 2015.
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Presuppositions, truth values, and expressing propositionsIn Gerhard Preyer & Georg Peter (eds.), Contextualism in philosophy: knowledge, meaning, and truth, Oxford University Press. 2005.
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Against Truth-Value GapsIn J. C. Beall (ed.), Liars and Heaps: New Essays on Paradox, Clarendon Press. 2004.
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QuantifiersIn Ernest Lepore & Barry C. Smith (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Language, Oxford University Press. 2006.
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Quine on Reference and QuantificationIn Gilbert Harman & Ernest LePore (eds.), A Companion to W. V. O. Quine, Wiley-blackwell. 2013.
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Lexical meaning, concepts, and the metasemantics of predicatesIn Derek Ball & Brian Rabern (eds.), The Science of Meaning: Essays on the Metatheory of Natural Language Semantics, Oxford University Press. 2018.
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Language |
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |
Philosophy of Mathematics |